Human use of fire and the Aboriginal fashioning of Australia's forests

HIST3106 Seminar paper, S1 2007


The use of fire in forest environments by various subsistence cultures throughout the world is quite well established (Williams 2003). However determining the extent to which the Australian landscape, especially forests, has been shaped by Aboriginal peoples is less clear-cut. Many forms of evidence from many different sources, from ethnographic studies to technologically advanced pollen and charcoal analysis, to the traditionally historical methods of examining the early colonial records, have contributed to a growing body of evidence for the presence of fire in the landscape. But the fire regimes of various ecosystems and usage of fire by Aborigines remains controversial and open to many interpretations.

Humans affect the incidence of fire in three ways. We can modify the fire regime by creating less or more intense fires, exclude fire from certain areas, or accentuate a fire regime by burning more frequently. Traditionally Aboriginal fire is associated with a predictable or systematic, frequent, low intensity regime that was productive and beneficial to the environment. By contrast, European occupation is associated with an unpredictable, less frequent, high intensity regime that destroys ecosystems, life and property. However closer examination of fire in the Australian environment by historians, biogeographers, archaeologists, ethnographers and geologists has problematised this simplistic understanding. The challenge now is to understand how fire works as an ecological process to enable conservation areas to be better managed and to minimise the risk to human life and property by bushfires, especially in the heavily populated south-east. Understanding how indigenous people used fire to manage forests forms a significant part of this knowledge.

There are, broadly speaking, three main positions on the relationship between fire, vegetation and indigenous Australians. On one extreme are those who argue that all of Australia was burnt regularly, from the grasslands to the forest, resulting in an entirely transformed landscape, such as Jones (1969) and Flood (1986). At the other extreme are those such as Horton (1982) who argue that the composition and extent of Australian vegetation is a product of the climate and local topographical conditions and that Aboriginal burning is indistinguishable from natural burning, both in terms of frequency and consequence for the ecosystem. Occupying the middle ground are those such as Lesley Head (2006), who view the Australian landscape to be a product of both nature and culture, the expression of which operates at a local level in a way that is dependent on many interacting variables.

Jones (1969) states that before Europeans came to Australia, the land had already been "colonized, exploited, and manipulated" by Aborigines, who "systematically and universally" lit bushfires over the entire continent (p.224-225). He argues that regular burning had several purposes and effects, amongst them the extension of useful land and increase in food production, allowing a higher population. Jones argues that firestick farming produced and maintained ecological disequilibriums and allowed an artificial extension of the range of pyrophytic plants. Fire was "an integral part of their [Aborigines] economy" (Jones 1969, p.228).

Flood (1986) envisaged the Aboriginal use of fire as a system of regular and low-intensity patch burns (mosaic burning) that reduced the likelihood of huge blanket burns such as are experienced today. Amongst the forest-specific uses of fire Flood lists keeping forest tracks accessible and increasing the yield of certain edible species such as cycads (1986, p.16). Flood also states that "regular, light burning was the pattern all over Australia at the time of first European contact (1986, p.16-17). She cites an example of rainforest expansion in NSW as a case of a vegetation community restricted by Aboriginal burning regimes that subsequently recolonises areas under the European regime of fire exclusion.

Taking the opposite stance, Horton (1982) argues that the effects of Aboriginal burning on the landscape are minimal at best and that the distribution of vegetation and animal communities were not shaped by frequent anthropogenic fire, but by natural fire regimes.

What we see reflected in the pollen record is climactic change resulting in vegetation change resulting in fire regime change which in turn causes vegetation change... Suggesting man as the cause of fire is starting from the wrong end of this chain of cause and effect and imposing a simple explanation where a complex one is required (Horton 1982, p.241).

Horton considers that it would be impossible to fire many areas of the continent on a yearly basis and that indigenous people never burnt vegetated areas more frequently than the natural “fire potential” (p. 242) would allow. He considers that the mosaic pattern of vegetation that is often attributed to Aboriginal fire use is an artifact of moisture and topography suppressing natural fire in some areas rather than others. According to Horton, indigenous peoples used their knowledge of the regeneration patterns of burnt ecosystems to maximise opportunities to use resources like kangaroo and food plants, but did not use fire regimes distinguishable from natural fire. The extent of anthropogenic fire was to provide an alternative source of ignition to naturally occurring lightening so that the potential fire regime of any given ecosystem could be realised (Horton, 1982).

An interaction model, where as-yet unknown, locally determined mechanisms are responsible for creating vegetation patterns, is proposed by Head (2006). She argues that there is no single way that fire was used by indigenous peoples and that we need to carefully examine the various assumptions that have underlain the Australian firestick farming debate, such as the conflation of Australia as a single land ecologically and the Aboriginal people as a single people culturally (Head 2006, p.8). She is also wary of ascribing universal motivations and methods to hunter-gather cultures and societies. Certainly her own research (Head 1994) does not support the hypothesis that all of Australia was regularly burnt, even though it highlights the significance of burning to the indigenous group she studied.


Problems with the evidence

While there is very good ethnographic evidence available for the use of fire in parts of Australia where indigenous communities are still able to access their land, such as parts of Northern Australia (see Jones 1969 and Head 1994), ethnographic evidence for fire use in communities who inhabited the forested parts of Australia, especially the south-eastern parts, is less helpful. These areas were settled by Europeans first and were most affected by disease and conflict with the European colonists and thus contemporary understanding of their cultures, languages, beliefs and practices is the least complete.

Written records from the early colony also need to be treated with caution when looking for evidence of Aboriginal fire management practices. Commentators may ascribe incorrect motivations to indigenous activities or project European sensibilities, prejudices or cultural attitudes onto their observations. Selective quoting from early documents can also be used (and indeed has been used – see Benson and Redpath 1997) to obscure the extent to which Europeans were also responsible for burning much of the early colonial landscape.

Lastly, the physical evidence of firestick farming practices in Australia is very difficult to disentangle from changes in the natural fire cycle due to changing vegetation and climactic patterns. Studies using sediment cores which are then examined for pollen and charcoal are subject to multiple interpretations. Conclusions based on core data must also take into account the accuracy of the dating, the correlation of the evidence with worldwide and local climate data and archaeological evidence about potential dates of Aboriginal colonisation and tool development. In general, studies based on this sort of physical evidence find a large increase in charcoal levels (and therefore fire activity) from the time of European colonisation (Black & Mooney 2006), but even the significance of this finding is debated as to whether it points to an increase in the number or severity of fires.


Political implications of firestick farming and forest management

According to Dargavel (1995), three-quarters of Australia's forests are under some kind of government jurisdiction, with National Park, State Forest or forest occurring on Crown Land comprising each approximately a quarter of the total forest area and the remaining quarter found on private land. There is very little indigenous involvement with forest management and very little remaining indigenous expertise. Despite, or perhaps because of this, the uncovering of historical fire regimes and practices by contemporary researchers has incredible potential to influence forest policy and management practices. The political significance of this should not be underestimated.

If the cultural thesis, such as that put forth by Jones and Flood, is correct and not only was Australia fired frequently, but the Aboriginal landscape was predominately grassy woodland, there is a strong case for farmers and graziers to be recognised as the best contemporary land managers (Benson & Redpath 1997). Their management of the land to ensure it remains sparsely-treed and grassy rather than forested means that the risk of large and destructive bushfires is potentially significantly lessened and an “Aboriginal” fire regime of annual, low intensity fires can be maintained. This argument would also strengthen the farmers' case against the National Parks as being partly responsible for damage caused by bushfires that originate within a National Park and subsequently escape onto private land (cf. Houston 2007). National Parks already ascribes to a policy of hazard reduction over conservation;

[Question] Will the presence of threatened species prevent hazard reduction?
[Answer] No. The protection of life and property is always the number one priority. (NSW NPWS 2006)

The long-term consequences of this policy may compromise the conservation of biodiversity in protected areas, and future generations may well ask why these areas were originally protected at all.

In a similar vein, if fire is widely agreed to be regular but not overly frequent in forest areas, then the long-term viability of urban forest remnants such as the Wallumatta and Dalrymple-Hay Reserves on Sydney's North Shore will need to be rethought. Uncertainty about the optimum fire frequency and protest against burning by the surrounding residents means that although these areas will need to be burnt to ensure their survival, they never will be. If preservation is impossible then a case could be made for releasing the land for development (at a healthy profit for the Government) or turning the area into a conventional park or recreation reserve (at a cost to the local council).

Finally, there is the potential for firestick farming to be conflated with agricultural and capitalist modes of production, thus rendering subsistence cultures unproblematic for Western capitalist ones. Jones (1969, p.224) appears to be an example of this;

The white man has been on this continent for 200 years in some places and less so in most others. Before he arrived, the continent had been colonized, exploited, and moulded by other men – the Australian Aborigines and their ancestors for tens of thousands of years.

When phrased this way the difference between indigenous and European peoples disappears. Neither has a greater moral claim to the land – both are colonisers, exploiters and constructors of their landscape. Aborigines are ascribed the same aims and motives as European colonisers, with the key difference being that their “primitive” state of technological development meant that fire was their only method of working the land. Firestick farming thus becomes a concept that allows for the assimilation of many and varied indigenous cultures into a monolithic capitalist European one. As Lesley Head (2006, p.5-6) says;

We have woven the fire story into a number of morality tales. Either Aboriginal peoples were ecological angels and we should learn from them, or Aborigines buggered up the land when they first arrived, but they adapted to the Australian environment and created a sustainable society, therefore we should too.


Conclusion

Although the indigenous management of other vegetation communities such as grasslands and savannahs is well established, the effect of Aboriginal fire on Australian forests may never be adequately determined. Interpretations of the current evidence are potentially coloured by the interests of various groups, such as farmers, forest managers, rural fire agencies and government departments. Theories of historical Aboriginal burning in forests can also be used to justify contemporary hazard reduction policies and forest management practices. Head (2006) probably comes closest to the truth when she says that the specific use of fire by any given group was determined by the interaction of a range of factors, both cultural and environmental, and as such a single, coherent “Aboriginal” method of forest management by fire does not exist. However, lacking sufficient ethnographic evidence for the land management practices of the indigenous groups who lived in the forested regions of south-eastern Australia, we may never know how and to what purpose they shaped their environment.




References

Benson, J S & Redpath, P A (1997) “The nature of pre-European native vegetation in south-eastern Australia: a critique of Ryan, D.G., Ryan, J.R. and Starr, B.J. (1995) The Australia Landscape – Observations of the Explorers and Early Settlers”. Cunninghamia, 5(2): 285-328.

Black, M P & Mooney, S D (2006) “Holocene fire history from the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, New South Wales, Australia: the climate, humans and fire nexus”. Regional Environmental Change, 6: 41-51.

Dargavel, J (1995) Fashioning Australia's Forests. Oxford Unversity Press, Melbourne.

Fleming, T & Cohen, S (2003) “Kosciuszko, and the burning issue of hazard reduction”. National Parks Journal, 47(2): 5-7.

Flood, J (1986) “Fire as an agent of change: Aboriginal use of fire in New South Wales”. Forest and Timber, 22: 15-18.

Head, L (1994) “Landscapes socialised by fire: post-contact changes in Aboriginal fire use in northern Australia, and implications for prehistory”. Archaeology in Oceania, 29(3): 172-181.

Head, L (2006) “The (Aboriginal) face of the (Australian) Earth”. The Jack Golson Lecture Series. Centre for Archaeological Research, ANU, Canberra.

Horton D R (1982) “The burning question: Aborigines, fire and Australian ecosystems”. Mankind, 13(3): 237-251.

Houston, C (2007) “Farmers launch class action over bushfire losses”. The Age, March 17 2007: 7.

Jones, R (1969) “Fire-stick farming”. Australian Natural History. September 1969, p. 224-228.

NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (2006) “Frequently asked questions about fire management in NSW national parks”. http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/npws.nsf/content/fire_faqs, retrieved 21/3/07.

Williams, M (2003) Deforesting the Earth. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.